5 Reasons You Should Be Playing Path of Exile

A few years ago a little company known as Grinding Gear Games set off on a journey to recreate the magic (and sweet, sweet loot amassing) they found whilst whittling away the wee hours of the night playing Diablo 2 during its heyday. The magical vessel on which this journey has been taken is known as Path of Exile.

Path of Exile officially launched on October 23, 2013. Within a matter of hours it had reached over 100k players via Steam and was lauded wholly by critics. Here are five reasons why you should be ignoring your family, financial responsibilities, hell… even your own well-being in favor of playing this amazing action role-playing game.

5. The Passive Tree and Skill System

The best way I can summarize these two gloriously implemented systems: think Final Fantasy X‘s Sphere Grid combined with Final Fantasy VII‘s Materia system.

Mind = Blown, right? I know. It’s the second greatest combination of things I can currently think of, the first being bacon and damn near anything else.

The Skill System is based on essentially finding or acquiring skill gems as quest rewards that you can freely plug in or remove from your gear sockets. These provide you with abilities, spells, or cool-downs usable by your character.

The Passive Tree is chock-full of nodes that basically enhance these abilities or grant you passive skills that further empower your character. The spectrum ranges from increased physical damage to spell damage, casting speed, health and/or mana, stat increases, or even increased damage by an elemental type.

4. The Loot

I don’t think I even really need to say more than that. If you’re an old school Diablo 2 fan and find these newer ARPGs didn’t quite scratch that itch for you, fear not item-junkies: this game has more drops than Michael J. Fox eating rice.

With a laundry list of unique bosses in most, if-not-all of the areas of the game (all of which are easily farmable) this game will have you filling up your inventory hundreds of times over.

Each place is also inhabited by the a-typical rare and champion packs of mobs who are usually modified with dangerous auras and/or buffs to increase the panic levels in most would-be adventurers. To further attest to the loot factor, GGG was implementing about 5 unique items and often times a new skill gem fairly regularly during the beta.

All of this culminates into a very bloody and fulfilling luck-based scavenger hunt of sorts that will literally have you screaming “GATTACA!” more often than others will like.

No, not the show, The League. (Even though it’s probably one of the funniest I’ve ever seen).

GGG has taken the best of what we and they remember from the D2 ladder system and improved upon it. They have your typical standard(softcore) and hardcore leagues. Prior to release they implemented four month leagues differentiated in name and ruleset based off of the two default types. The current iteration of these leagues are Domination and Nemesis.

Domination is the softcore version where players traipse through monster-infested areas only to happen upon magical shrines that will imbue them with temporary power.

Nemesis is the hardcore league that allows rare monsters to pull from a Nemesis List for added buffs. This includes: a guaranteed unique on kill, splitting into smaller versions upon death, spectral resurrection and many other potentially nasty buffs (when combined with their already randomly generated modifiers can lead to one hell of a fight for the player).

There are also Race Seasons where one can accrue points based on how well they did in the particular races; this is to earn unique item rewards and other various things that are proven to elongate the virtual peen. Numerous races are scheduled throughout the week and have a completely different set of rules dependent on the type of race it is.

One notable difference in the hardcore leagues here in contrast to Diablo 2: when your characters die they end up going to the softcore version of that ladder or league. They will still be playable in their new league but will remain forever unclean.

2. It’s Free to Play and Definitely NOT Pay to Win.

Yep, you read that correctly. Free. To. Play.

The most common problem with the F2P format is that in certain games you can essentially pay to make your character more powerful.

GGG has respect for themselves and has yet to allow any microtransactions to give a person one single iota of power over another. A few of the various microtransactions that are available are extra storage (in my opinion a must have –they put them on sale a lot — I grabbed 6 extra storage tabs for $20), cosmetic effects for weapons and armor and graphical changes for abilities. You can also purchase the opportunity to help design/create your very own unique item.

1. Because I Said So

I can’t tell you what to do. I’m not your real dad either. Unlike your father though, I won’t leave you at six years of age, while mommy’s working at the local stri… look, I have a staunchdisdain for many micro transaction based games or micro transactions on the whole. I think they’re complete and utter bullshit for the most part and try to avoid them like an ex.

However, I have spent more than the $20 already on PoE than I had previously mentioned. Why? Because it’s worth every penny of it. I didn’t have to pay an up front price to enjoy this wonderful game and it’s the very least I can do to continue to support these crazy Kiwis. I also really enjoy that the developers regularly post on their Official Forums,Reddit,Twitter and are typically not shy about conversing with the player-base in any of the aforementioned mediums. This really resonates with me as a gamer, as it should anyone else who cares deeply for the games that hook them.

Personally I’ve been longing for a game that could even remotely hold a candle to what Diablo 2 means to me. Some of my fondest nerd-related teenage memories are tied to that game; for GGG to want to recreate that magic that not only they felt, but millions of others felt when they played D2… well, that’s a damn fine investment of time and money to me.

So grab some buddies, put on your robe and wizard hat, give in to those genocidal tendencies your therapist has been warning you about and have some loot-filled fun while you forge your own Path of Exile.

About The Author

BJ is without a doubt the 2nd greatest thing to happen to 1986, the first being the Chicago Bears winning the SuperBowl, bear down. He's an avid gamer, a lover of all things wrapped in or cooked with bacon, a drinker of cold Coors Light and has a penchant to say hilariously offensive and irresponsible things.
He's a man with a beard. He's not afraid to admit he likes kittens and wears flannel. Why? Because flannel is the go-to material for those who deal proudly and unapologetically in the currency of brawn.

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Damn, them’s a lot of skills on that skill tree. So say I’m more of a casual gamer (despicable I know); will I still be able to get into this?

David Brown

The skill panel is more to buff your stats and skills than for skills themselves. You get skills from the gems you socket into your gear. You can get a gem that gives you an AOE cleave attack for example, and then use the skill panel to buff the damage that skill can do or increase the accuracy or range of the skill.

hunter4hire

Yes and no, many keystone passives can drastically alter your character and his skills. They are passive, but they are what makes 70%-90% of every character.

BJ White

I believe so! I have many ‘casual’ friends who have recently got into the game and are enjoying it immensely. That skill tree may seem daunting at first but once you play around with a few builds or do a little research via Google or The PoE Wiki; you’ll find yourself getting a better grasp on the synergistic properties of the passives. One of my favorite aspects of the game in terms of fun is definitely building a spec around a spell or combination of spells/abilities that aren’t commonly used or found in many of the Flavor of the Month builds.

fuze

You could at least have used the current skill tree and not the super old one..

Russ Whiting

Just as the writer said, “You used an outdated skill tree picture and not the one I provided,” you have to go and leave a comment like this.

I was only trying to get a clearer one for you sweet, gentle readers, dammit! (Should be fixed now, by the way.)

Manuel Granados

This game is all sorts of awesome.

Unlike most, I did like Diablo 3, but I also loved PoE.

gsdf

4. The loot.
Just want to clarify something here. The loot suck. There’s a lot yeah, but just like in your screenshot, it’s all garbage. The drops are bad. That is all.

hunter4hire

wrong, even garbage loot can be animated to fight for you, and if you don’t find what u need, YOU CAN CRAFT IT! or trade in a set of unidentified rares for chaos orbs at the vendors. Also, yesterday I got 2 uniques and a kickass 5linked bow from a level boss on cruel. Do some homework next time before criticizing what you barely know.